Microplastics Update

Today Vanessa VanHeerden and I found that there are micro-plastics in some of the sand samples from the Cook islands.  We will be processing the rest of the 85 samples throughout the next month.  

On another note: Under the advisement and guidance of Dr. Clare Wormald-Steele and Dr. Sean Anderson last week I started exposing the collected sample of sand crabs to micro plastic beads to see if they would ingest them.  After 1 week the sand crabs were frozen and then dissected today.  Vanessa VanHeerden and I  found that over 80% of them had ambient fibers/plastics in their digestive tracts.  1 of the sand crabs that was exposed to micro plastic beads had 92 plastic microbeads inside of it.  These are initial findings and we plan to investigate further.